Sunday, May 3, 2015

How to choose your college?

Off late people come and ask me a question "Which
college can I choose?"

I can understand that this is admissions season with the
High School results round the corner, the tensions on choosing the right course
and the college runs high among students groups and higher among their parents.

One statement from the student "God, please get me an
admission to a decent college, I will study very hard to get very good
marks". (Hardly happens)

A statement from every parent "My kid has to got to a
good institute, once inside his / her life is settled".

These five questions will make you determine which college you can choose;

1. What sill the
marks that you will score?

This plays a vital factor in our education system, so the
marks are important to get yourselves ranked higher.

2. What do you want
to do in life (professionally / for a living)?

This has to come from deep within. One cannot try to be a
Charted Accountant just because his / her father is one and their grandfather
was one too. This has to come from the student's heart.

3. Have you explored
any courses aligned to your dream life?

Most of the cases the student likes to be a engineer and get
into an IT company job. Otherwise, wants to be a engineer and then plan his
career accordingly. Why? His friend is planning that way.

4. Have you short
listed any colleges?

There are many criteria to consider on short listing the
colleges, the buzzword is however placement. There are various factors apart
from placements like the accreditation, infrastructure, faculty, extracurricular
/ co-curricular activities, clubs, etc.

5. Cut-off criteria?

Perhaps the most important ground work of all is the cutoff
criteria. This can only be predicted, the probability of happening cannot be
very accurate (perhaps need some bigdata analytics here).A simple determination here is estimate your
cutoff mark and compare it with the colleges data available last year (Have a
threashold of 5% to 7% up / down)

Having answered these, there will be a top and a bottom institute of your choice, so the best thing to do is analyze the ones in between these and take a call.